3 shot to death in dispute over fireworks

A neighbor apparently angry about noisy fireworks shot three people to death early Thursday and wounded two others, police said.

Terrance Hough Jr., a 35-year-old off-duty firefighter, was arrested in connection with the shootings near his home shortly after midnight, police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said. No charges had been filed Thursday morning.

The shooter was apparently upset about loud noise from fireworks at a house next door and opened fire, killing two men and a woman, all in their early- to mid-20s, Stacho said. He said another man was shot in the elbow and a woman was wounded in the hand.

Police had received a number of complaints in recent years about loud parties, fireworks and drag racing connected to the house where the victims were shot, Stacho said. Some complaint calls came from Hough's address, but no one called police about the party Thursday night.

Full Story: CNN.com

Alternate Tags: Shooting, fireworks, noise, 4th of July

Video: Watch Friends create a memorial for the shooting victim: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/05/fireworks.ap/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Girl, 4, called 911 nearly 300 times

Authorities tracked down a 4-year-old girl who called 911 nearly 300 times last month by offering to deliver McDonald's to her suburban Chicago apartment.

Unbeknownst to her mother, the girl used a deactivated cell phone to call dispatchers 287 times in June - sometimes as often as 20 times a shift.

Dispatchers heard the child's voice but could only track the phone's signal to the apartment complex.

So authorities used a ruse to pinpoint her.

"We asked (the caller) what she wanted. She said she wanted McDonald's," said Steve Cordes, executive director of QuadCom's emergency center, which covers Carpentersville.

Full Story: Victorville Daily News

Alternate Tags: Tags: 911, prank calls, 4-year-old girl, deactivated cell phone, false promises of deliciousness

Connecticut man teaches toddler not to bite by biting him all over

A city man was in custody Wednesday after police said he bit his 3-year-old nephew all over his body to teach the boy not to bite anyone.

Hector Pulido, 40, of North Summerfield Avenue, was charged with third-degree assault and risk of injury to a minor.

Superior Court Judge Michael Maronich ordered Pulido held in lieu of $100,000 bond. The case was continued to next Thursday.

The allegations came to light when police were called to a day-care center on Fairfield Avenue Tuesday to investigate a complaint of child abuse. The day-care staff showed officers that the boy had adult bite marks on his chest, abdomen, shoulder, back, thigh, leg and buttocks, police said.

Full Story: CONN POST . COM

Man Gets 5 Years for Blowing Up Toilet

A man once called one of the Internet's most notorious pirates of music and movies was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for plowing up a portable toilet, prosecutors said.

Bruce Forest, 50, was charged last year with a series of toilet explosions in 2005 and 2006. But under a plea agreement, Forest admitted only to blowing up one toilet in Weston in February 2006. No one was injured in any of the blasts.

His defense attorney and his wife said the incident was completely out of character for Forest. They said he had been addicted to painkillers initially taken for migraine headaches caused by a severe fall about 10 years ago. A prescribed drug intended to wean him off the painkillers caused psychotic episodes, they said.

Forest was an Internet pirate in the late 1990s, said J.D. Lasica, a San Francisco writer who dubbed Forest "Prince of the Darknet" in his 2005 book "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation."

Full Story: MY WAY